Buzzangle Music’s 2018 U.S. Music Industry Report has tongues wagging this week as there’s a lot of information to analyze and digest. Everyone agrees it shows a music industry in transition (though, when was it not in transition?) and growing
The most popular 10 percent of songs accounted for 99 percent of all audio streams. … Flip that statistic around: 90 percent of streamable music is responsible for just one percent of actual streams.
That concentration was only a smidgeon less severe at the top of the distribution in 2018, according to BuzzAngle’s latest report. The top 500,000 most popular songs in 2017 accounted for 93.6 percent of all streams. The comparable number in 2018 fell the tiniest bit, to 92.4 percent of all streams.
Music Business Report takes a rosier view of these statistics:
The interesting bit: in 2017, the USA’s Top 500,000 tracks racked up 14.6-times as many audio streams as every other piece of music. In 2018, however, this multiple had fallen significantly, down to 12.2. Despite on-demand audio streaming’s overall volume growing by 41.8% in the US in 2018, the actual number of plays dedicated to the Top 50 tracks fell harshly – down by a pretty shocking 74.6%. […]
In other words (give or take a couple of billion streams): pretty much all of the growth in the US audio streaming market last year came outside the Top 500 tracks (aka outside the weekly Top 10 chart).
I suppose that could be interpreted as great news for independent labels
And if the disparity has indeed gotten worse, then that may also be representative of other factors than the platform. I’ve thought about this a lot, and I was pleased to see Rolling Stone hit the nail on the head with this easily overlooked sentence:
… the fact remains that the rampant inequality that has become pervasive in other aspects of American life is similarly acute in the streaming-verse.
Above: another pic from the sticks, hope I don’t get ticks. I’m hiding out in this remote location for a couple more days.
I’m a fan of email newsletters — I subscribe to way too many — and one of my favorites is Cherie Hu’s Water & Music. Even outside of the newsletter Hu is one of my favorite music industry writers/pundits, and she seems to reserve her most thought-provoking opinions for the newsletter. And 2018’s final edition of Water & Music, titled ‘The Music Industry’s Inconvenient Truths,’ is a corker.
The premise revolves around answers to the question, “What is one truth about the music industry that very few people agree with you on?” I can’t say I strongly disagree with any of the responses Hu received, and this one bolsters the direction of my consulting work. But it’s Hu’s two answers to the question that elicit the most thought — this newsletter’s been reeling in my head since I read it a few days ago.
Hu’s first answer has familiarity as she’s dropping some Seth Godin knowledge and I just finished his latest book, This Is Marketing. The concept of the ‘smallest viable audience’ is emphasized, which states that an artist should only seek to please his die-hard fans. Musicianship and ‘honing the craft’ remain important, but not at the expense of serving the needs of those who support you. Says Hu:
Let’s put it this way: as long as music can be materialized as an item or activity whose purchase generates revenue for somebody, music is a product. People who buy or engage with a musical product are referred to by the industry as “fans,” so “fan” is just another word for “customer.” Customers buy the products that best satisfy their own needs and desires. So, like in any other industry, the best music products most effectively address customers’ needs and satisfy clearly-defined gaps in the market that other products haven’t filled.
In This Is Marketing, Godin argues that we are all marketers as individuals seeking to make a change in others. For the recording artist, that change is as simple (or complex) as convincing a listener to check out her album rather than someone else’s. Godin then challenges us to think of ourselves as something more than marketers — also as teachers, delivering value and reward to our customers/fans. With a teacher mindset, we’re encouraged to produce meaningful content for those who are paying the most attention.
I could go on and on about this but I’ll save it for a future post. I’m cutting myself short as I can’t wait to get to Hu’s next proclamation: “The word ‘creator’ does more harm than good:”
I understand that the word “creator” might be the simplest, most easily accessible term for addressing all possible users releasing content on a given platform. And don’t get me wrong: democratizing creativity is undeniably a force for good, and the last thing the world should do is give fewer people access to tools for making art and expressing themselves. But who owns and profits from that creativity is an entirely separate debate, in danger of being obfuscated by the widespread adoption and promotion of “creator” as a job title.
It may seem like semantics, but the way we adopt and use language rewires our thinking (hello, George). Hu’s point— which I never considered — is that the more we refer to ourselves as ‘creators,’ the easier it is to submit to the notion that our creations are in fealty to others. Notice how the services almost all use ‘creator’ — a sampling of examples Hu points out include YouTube Creators, Facebook for Creators, Spotify’s “Creator Marketing.’ So when a platform sneakily claims ownership of our work — as Spotify did with its #PraiseV campaign (see Hu’s newsletter) — we’re desensitized against protest. Hu again:
Throughout history, the democratization of creativity has coincided with a dilution of clarity around ownership […] [and] the mechanisms by which other companies can claim IP ownership in a world of democratized creation are becoming much swifter than reading through tens of pages of a record contract.
I feel like the tech platforms — Spotify, Apple, Amazon, et al. — would like us to start thinking of music as software. That is, we’ve ‘created’ something that’s inseparable from their technologies. Just as Omnifocus, my to-do app of choice, won’t run and can’t exist without my iMac, a song can’t exist without Spotify. Then we start thinking of our music as dependent on the platform when, of course, it’s the other way around.
That’s one thing I love about music publishing. Its framework forces us to think of compositions as separate from the recordings and undetachable from the songwriter. A song isn’t a creation, per se, but an idea tied to an individual (or individuals, if there are co-writers). The tech platforms have had their problems with music publishing, showing that the intimacy of composition may help protect against music becoming software. But, as Cherie Hu points out, the real battle may be fought through language and how a shift in simple phrasing affects the ownership mindset of future songwriters. Let’s hold on to our ideas and understand that songs are breathing things that exist on their own, platform be damned. Don’t let your music become software.
P.S. — I realize this last bit may seem in contradiction to the first, where it appears I’m referring to songs as product. But it’s not in opposition at all if you understand the type of marketing we’re doing as artists. Godin’s This Is Marketing will help you understand and I recommend it.
P.P.S.— There’s no disrespect intended to software and software makers. But I feel programmers have a better understanding of their IP rights in the milieu of platform-dependence than songwriters and artists do.
Here’s an enthusiastic TED Talk from Jack Conte, co-founder of Patreon and one-half of Pomplamoose:
Conte: What gets me super excited to be a creator right now, to be alive today, to be a creative person right now, is realizing that we’re only ten years into figuring out this new machine, to figuring out the next hundred years of infrastructure for our creators. And you can tell we’re only ten years in as there’s a lot of trial and error. There’s some really good ideas and there’s a lot of experimentation.We’re figuring out what works and what doesn’t.
More from The Verge on Patreon’s promise:
Patreon isn’t simply a replacement for record labels or TV networks, though. Instead it’s the ideal incubator for niche internet subcultures, where a small but dedicated group of fans can directly support work they care about. That includes traditional arts and entertainment, but also YouTube celebrities, cultural figures, or even political actions — some inspiring, some troubling. The Patreon model encourages people to see themselves not as consumers, but as members of a private club, free from the constraints of mainstream gatekeepers or mass-market appeal. And in the process, it’s blurred the lines between art, artist, and audience in an unprecedented way.
I admit two things here: I share Conte’s optimism and enthusiasm for being a creative person in this current era. I also quite like the idea of Patreon. It’s been tough for me to warm up to crowd-funders like Kickstarter and PledgeMusic as I can’t get over the perception of having to plead with one’s fans.
Then there’s the ‘breaking the fourth wall’ aspect. “Pledge $500 and the band will cook you dinner.” I know this works for some artists and fits in their M.O., but is this the future for all creators? Maybe I’m old fashioned in that I enjoy an air of mystery from the musical acts I enjoy. I’d rather not have them cook me dinner or call me on the phone in return for some cash.
On the outside, Patreon seems different. The ‘patron’ is joining the fan club and getting perks. For musicians using Patreon, these perks could be advance peeks at songs, limited merch or physical releases, and glimpses into the creative process. But there’s also the phone calls, the live chats, the guitar lessons. Again, that’s fine if this intimacy with fans comes naturally, but the worry is it becoming an expectation from those who aren’t comfortable. You know, like most artistic types.
From The Verge again:
Unlike their predecessors, internet celebrities thrive on a radical accessibility. {Musician Peter} Hollens, for example, has built his current a cappella career on subverting the rock star mystique. He’s got an easy answer for why there are so few fellow musicians topping Patreon’s charts: “Musicians are a product. We have a difficult time conveying to the audience that we’re people,” he says. “I’m a person first and a musician second, because that’s the best angle to take to succeed in the future as a musician. It’s very difficult to have that come across when you have, like, a slick produced audio and visual thing.” His music videos are complex and stylish, but he ends each one by earnestly addressing the camera, breaking the fourth wall between him and his audience.
In this system, it’s almost impossible to separate a work of art from its creator — or, at least, its creator’s public persona. Is there a future for someone who wants to be a musician, but not a personality? “No. I don’t think so,” Hollens says. “I don’t think the reclusive thing is going to happen anymore. That’s not the world we live in. Like, the Brad Pitts of the world” — distant celebrities who are loved from afar — “are losing value.”
I still think there’s room for the aloof artist. With accessibility becoming the norm I’m entertaining the idea that aloofness might now be a marketable ‘angle.’ I’d love to see a mysterious artist use and exploit Patreon, or something like it, and subvert the platform’s preference for approachability. Is there anyone out there presently attempting this?
Spotify and Apple Music could soon get the legal grey area of music like remixes and DJ sets that today live unofficially on SoundCloud. Sony Music Entertainment today became the first major record label to allow its music to be monetized through unofficial mixes thanks to a deal with rights clearance startup Dubset. That means Sony’s master recordings will be indexed by Dubset, and rights holders will be compensated even if just a tiny one-second snippet of their song is used in a DJ set or remix.
A source tells TechCrunch that Dubset is getting closer to securing deals with the other two major labels Warner and Universal.
If it can lock down all three, remixes and DJ sets featuring almost any music could be legally hosted on the top streaming services instead of being barred or removed for copyright infringement. That might eliminate the differentiation that’s kept struggling SoundCloud afloat. Illegal music uploaded there has sometimes flown under the radar since SoundCloud is protected by Safe Harbor law regarding user generated content. But if it’s legally available on Spotify, Apple Music, and elsewhere, listeners wouldn’t have to go to SoundCloud.
Could we be stepping closer to a mainstream acceptance of remix culture? A future where derivative works are not only allowed but encouraged is a divergent music future, indeed. As previously stated on this blog, if you can clear unauthorized remixes using Dubset, then why not clear samples eventually? We might be entering an era where most music is fair game for creative mutation, and the original artists get paid. How will that work with songs already released, especially the ones that sneakily didn’t clear drum loops or other samples? Should clearance lawyers start looking at new career options?
As far as Apple Music and Spotify go, I really can’t see them opening up their services to user-uploaded content a la SoundCloud. I’m ready to be surprised, but I do think those predictions are off the mark. The Verge gives a clue to where this might be headed for the two big streamers:
DJ mixes have historically proved to be especially difficult for monetized distribution. “The average mix is 62 minutes long and has 22 different songs in it, and those 22 different songs are represented by over 100 different rights holders,” {Dubset CEO Stephen} White tells The Verge. Using Dubset’s technology, a 60-minute mix can be processed in just 15 minutes.
During that 60-minute mix, White says, MixSCAN will fingerprint every three seconds of audio. “We’re using a combination of audio fingerprinting technologies and fairly advanced algorithmic approaches to identify the underlying masters that are being used in a mix or a remix,” he says. Although MixBANK asks DJs themselves to identify the masters, White says this is just to help validate MixSCAN’s results.
Apple’s Beats 1 Radio regularly broadcasts sets by newsworthy artists and celebrities, but the Beats 1 platform still fails to make the news. These DJ events need exposure outside of the ephemeral original broadcast. Wouldn’t it be nice if the sets were recorded and archived, and then available to play on demand via Apple Music? I think that’s what’s happening here. A different sort of license is required to make these DJ sets available on demand, and every song (and, yes, unofficial remix) must be cleared for this type of usage. Theoretically, Dubset’s technology would not only clear the songs in the mix, but it would be able to do so in 15 minutes. A Beats 1 set could be available to stream on Apple Music within thirty minutes of its broadcast. Voilà. And I’d wager Spotify has similar ambitions.
Previously and Previously and Previously
The Musical Genome, the algorithm behind Pandora, sifts through 450 pieces of information about the sound of a recording. For example, a song might feature the drums as being one of the loudest components of the sound, compared to other features of the recording. That measurement is a piece of data that can be incorporated into the larger model. Pandora uses these data to help listeners find music that is similar in sound to what they have enjoyed in the past.
This approach upends the 20th-century assumptions of genre. For example, a genre such as classic rock can become monolithic and exclusionary. Subjective decisions about what is and isn’t “rock” have historically been sexist and racist.
With Pandora, the sound of a recording becomes much more influential. Genre is only one of 450 pieces of information that’s being used to classify a song, so if it sounds like 75 percent of rock songs, then it likely counts as rock.
Meanwhile, Shazam began as an idea that turned sound into data. The smartphone app takes an acoustic fingerprint of song’s sound to reveal the artist, song title and album title of the recording. When a user holds his phone toward a speaker playing a recording, he quickly learns what he is hearing.
The listening habits of Shazam’s 120 million active users can be viewed in real time, by geographic location. The music industry now can learn how many people, when they heard a particular song, wanted to know the name of the singer and artist. It gives real-time data that can shape decisions about how – and to whom – songs are marketed, using the preferences of the listeners. Derek Thompson, a journalist who has examined data’s affects on the music industry, has suggested that Shazam has shifted the power of deciding hits from the industry to the wisdom of a crowd.
This morning on our Slack channel (message me if you might want in) I was having a discussion with Jon Curtis, newly responsible for the wonderful blog A Poke in the Ear (With a Sharp Stick). Jon posted an article about the apparent inevitability of Spotify windowing out big new releases from their free tier. I commented that this might somewhat curtail the recent phenomenon of multiple songs from a single album release simultaneously filling up the pop charts, now that streaming numbers affect position. I shared a link to an article in The Guardian about Ed Sheeran doing just that, with 16 album tracks in the UK top 20.
Jon Curtis:
The takeaway: “The problem isn’t so much the charts as what streaming is doing to music itself. The vast gap between pop’s behemoths and everyone else is a problem that the medium only compounds.” The charts were always about popularity … initially number of products sold, now number of products streamed. This skews the playing field dramatically. And, like most questions that are posed in online headers {in this case: “Can the charts be fixed?”}, the answer is no, they can’t be fixed.
My response:
I don’t know if I agree with the quote. I think the disparity of ‘pop behemoths’ vs. the second tier is reflective of such growing (and troubling) disparity overall in our society, and there are other factors unique to our time – such as rampant media consolidation and the fact that there are now three ‘major labels’ – mainly to blame. But, on the flip-side, there are now more people making a living in creative fields due to the democratizing effect of the internet (which includes streaming) then there ever were. The most disappointed are those feeling they’ve been cheated out of their Led Zeppelin-style private jet because it’s not like it was in 1975 (spoiler: it wasn’t like that actually).
Regarding charts: I managed a major retail store during the introduction of Soundscan and saw firsthand how that stuff was gamed. But now that we’ve got a million easy-to-access niches (and many self-released artists making a reasonable, lower middle class living off music streaming and such) things like ‘charts’ are even less relevant. I think the Ed Sheeran bit above is hilarious, and it’s fine with me. If that’s how they want to set the metric for their charts then so be it … all this does is send true music fans away from traditional outlets (charts, corporate radio, etc) and into avenues of discovery.
I also admitted that even I’m strangely fascinated by my recurring mix of optimism and cynicism.
One of the remaining bastions of the college-rock era has fallen silent, at least for now. For the second week in a row, CMJ has not published its weekly college radio charts, calling into question the fate of an institution that has tracked the music played by college stations around the country since 1978. No date has been set for when the venerable—and, once, invaluable—charts will resume.
The chart hiatus is just the latest in a series of setbacks for CMJ. The last-known remaining employee, Lisa Hresko, recently took a new job with indie-label trade group A2IM. And last year’s lack of a CMJ Music Marathon, for the first time in the event’s 35-year history, came despite {CMJ owner Adam} Klein’s assurance it “absolutely” would happen in 2016.
Also from Pitchfork:
The rise of CMJ coincided with the heyday of college radio during the late 1980s and early ’90s. Though initially used as an education tool for broadcasting lectures, by the end of the ’80s college radio had become an indispensable musical tastemaker, with trade magazines and multiple nationwide charts tracking the growing popularity of the market. Bands including U2, R.E.M., the Cure, the Smiths, Dinosaur Jr., Hüsker Dü, Minutemen, the Replacements, and more were first broadcast by enterprising students with open ears.
The influence and relevance of college radio has undoubtedly diminished since the ’90s, challenged by new outlets for musical discovery and listening that began with the rise of blogging, file sharing, and widespread broadband access around the turn of the century. The entire economy of critical and economic success for musicians has changed so rapidly in the last 25 years that exposure on college radio can seem quaint in 2017.
Starting around 2010, a growing number of colleges began transferring their FM broadcast licenses to larger conglomerates for a short-term economic windfall. While each case is informed by different circumstances and buyers, they are united by the administrative opinion that students don’t really care that much about radio anymore (and that fast cash can be made).
When licenses are sold, the process can be messy, divisive, and upsetting. Such sales can also have further consequences, cutting off exposure for nearby businesses and artistic communities. That said, administrators are not necessarily wrong in doubting terrestrial radio’s continuing relevance. College radio has always occupied a very tiny space, and most stations are so small they don’t even show up on the ratings system that measures listenership. And last year, a nationwide survey on media consumption found that only 9 percent of people in the 12-24 age bracket use AM/FM radio as their source for keeping up with music; the same demographic was more likely to use YouTube (22 percent) or streaming platforms like Pandora, Spotify, and SiriusXM (11 percent in total across the services) to find their favorite new artists.
College radio may be the only hold-over from the music industry’s fading recent past that gets me wistful and nostalgic. My time as a college radio DJ and music director is incalculably responsible for what I’m doing today. Even before that, discovering new sounds on static-filled college radio signals beaming in from faraway cities changed my young life … I grew up in the middle of nowhere and actively sought out these distant stations, often only picking them up in the middle of the night. Here in Orlando we’re lucky to still have a freeform college station, WPRK 91.5 FM – one of the oldest college stations in the USA. I really should tune in more often.
But I’m also heartened by the democratization of broadcasting, whether it’s from podcasts on Mixcloud, or shows on internet radio stations, or even meticulously crafted playlists bursting with esoterica. I know, it’s not the same, but all is not lost either. To pull another quote from the second article, “if anything, the platform’s loose mission of promoting discovery, serendipity, and community has persevered despite setbacks because the desire for those very things will continue …”. As long as there are freaks like me (and those I grew up listening to) who obsessively crave not only finding the latest sounds but also sharing them with others there will be something like college radio. Unfortunately (or not?), it just might not have anything to do with college.
Vinyl sales may have hit their highest level in the UK since 1991 but this is hardly a sign of what is to come. Indeed, a quick look through the top 10 vinyl albums of 2016 reveals that all but one of the artists were releasing music back in 1991! The exception is Amy Winehouse and she’s dead. The majority of the volume of vinyl sales is driven by nostalgic older music fans.
Not only is vinyl not the future (it was just 2.6% of sales in 2016), the big differences between the most popular vinyl, streaming, singles and album artists reveal just how fragmented the music business has become. Each of the top 10 charts (album sales, singles, top streaming artists, vinyl sales) almost reads as a standalone group of artists with remarkably little cross over. In fact, only 2 artists appear across streaming, singles and albums. None appear across all four charts.
As large volumes of older consumers switch to streaming (and Amazon should play a key role here) there will be more opportunity to join the dots. But do not mistake this simply as an opportunity to try to revive yesterday’s formats in today’s platforms. The album is clearly fading. According to MIDiA Research survey data, 68% of subscribers state that playlists are replacing albums for them. It is time to start investing though and effort in rethinking what album experiences should be in the digital era. And that conversation should have no bounds, everything should be on the table (number of tracks, street date vs continual updates, interactivity, changing content etc.).
Digitization has brought new strategic challenges, and falling revenue, to the industry. Yet it has also brought new opportunities to a wider variety of artists. By reducing search costs, the digitization of music makes it easier to discover new artists and albums. It is {also} less costly to release new music, leading to unpredictable successes from artists who might not have been discovered or produced an album in an earlier era.
With subscription pricing and the ability to easily skip among artists (as opposed to per-album or per-song charges, which were the norm), streaming pushes users to listen to explore new artists. This has the potential to reduce the concentration of the very top artists and albums, while also helping music lovers find what economists refer to as the “long tail” of the industry.
“Spotify has democratised the universe,” is the dramatic, understandably Spotify-centric view of Spotify’s George Ergatoudis, who joined the service this year after a decade as pop’s most powerful tastemaker at BBC Radio 1. “One of our editors can find something, believe in it, put it in a playlist, see an interesting result from the audience then accelerate the song.” Systems inside Spotify automatically create playlists of what Ergatoudis describes as “emerging stories” (songs) which editors then trawl through when they’re compiling the playlists vital in achieving true hugeness. “There’s a lot of human curation time spent on saying, ‘Right, there’s some noise there, but what do we think about it editorially?’” Ergatoudis says.
It’s reassuring that discovery isn’t left entirely to algorithms, but this editorial aspect creates another question. Namely: has streaming liberated new artists from the constraints of regimented radio playlists and the whims of ego-crazed music critics, only to replace that system with a different set of gatekeepers? “The term ‘gatekeeper’ assumes we’re blocking something worthy coming through,” Ergatoudis insists. “I’d argue we’re not doing that. We’re letting good stuff through, and amplifying it.”
Ergatoudis argues that the gate being kept is now an extremely large one, or perhaps a load of different gates, through which different artists can pass. Demographics differ from service to service – Apple Music and Tidal skew urban – but as streaming services aren’t restricted by hours in a day, like mainstream radio stations, we’re looking at the possibility of multiple concurrent musical zeitgeists. For the first time, something like the UK’s long-trumpeted guitar-music resurgence wouldn’t have to come at the expense or, say, grime’s increasing popularity.
Check out this lengthy interview with Merlin BV CEO Charles Caldas on [PIAS]’s fine blog, worth reading in full. A couple of excerpts:
[PIAS]: Did Spotify save the music business?
Charles Caldas: I don’t really subscribe to the ‘silver bullet’ view of the music industry. But Spotify’s certainly led the way to helping people to understand that there are different ways to monetise these rights. They showed you could marry those disruptive technologies with real commercial opportunities – not just threats.
Now if you look at the value Apple Music, Amazon and Google Play is bringing into the streaming business, you’re starting to see that’s shaping what the future of the business will look like.
[PIAS]: A lot of people are saying streaming isn’t mainstream yet.
Charles Caldas: That’s an important point. When I was younger, I was trying to sell records into HMV in Australia which was the epitome of the mainstream retailer. Let’s be generous and say there were 10,000 titles in that store. If you weren’t in those 10,000 titles you were invisible to the people in that store.
Now, the mainstream is whatever is on the services – every bit of music ever released. That’s why independents are front and centre in the market today. We’re not relegated to the specialist retailers or to the back of the shop.
Look into it from a consumer point of view: you can come into an environment like Spotify and what you’re discovering is no longer limited to what you hear on the radio, saw on television or read about in the press.
What we call over-indexing today is to me the rightful performance of independent music in the marketplace. The days of ‘if only the record store would stock this record’ have gone.
Connect With Me: